Thank You for the Input, Now Go Do Your Own Job!

What is a professional, neighborly and tactful way to get the neighborhood or work environment busybody back to work and quit distracting you? You all know the person I am talking about, they never seem to have enough time for you or your request, but sure as heck can tell you what needs to be done and how! Am I right on this?

Ok, here are my 10 tactful methods you can use to get your message across to this type of person:

Ask the person;
1. Why are you concerned about that subject or task?
2. What are you currently doing to support the task or information you are asking about?
3. How will this information be of value to you and utilized you?
4. Ask them to go and get information, or divert an actionable task back to them if possible.
5. If the person asks general questions about a task or subject you know that is outside of their scope, you can respond with "I do not think those questions or actions are information that you would find helpful."
6. If there are areas that you think some assistance is warranted, go and talk to the manager, or team leader about it.
7. If the diversions caused by this person become uncontrollable, go and speak to your manager or team leader about the issues created by this person and seek their input situational resolution.
8. Tell the person asking you don't know; please go see the person in charge or in management.
9. When true and appropriate, tell them they do not have a need to know or I can not comment on that.
10. If all else fails, tell the person you do not think they are in a position to request that information or assistance from you. If they persist, offer to review with your manager or team leader.

Everyday we all will come across people that want to be in the know, have to know and tell you what they know. You can not avoid this personality type, as they are very persistent. What you can do is minimize the commotion these personality types create. You do not have to be rude (unless of course the just do not get it) but remain firmly in control. When you are confronted with this type of situation, try to remember and implement one of the 10 methods above, I think you'll be pleased with what transpires. If their persistence prevails and you feel yourself loosing control, take back control and get out of the situation quickly by simply physically walking away.

Good luck and much to success to you.

Three Sports Related Lessons We All Can Learn From

Everyone in some form or fashion is exposed to sports on a very regular basis either through participation, watching an event on television, reading an article about a team or athlete. Even if you are not an avid sports fan, you will inevitably come across a sports related situation on a daily basis. Due to the popularity of sports and increased media exposure, I think sports are a great teaching tool for all of us; young and old, if put in proper perspective. Proper perspective from my standpoint is categorized in three general groups.

* Win humbly and lose graciously: Easy to put into words, very difficult to implement especially when you are on the losing end of a sporting event. Look at the NBA Finals and how Dallas reacted after game 5; these are professional people that let losing take each of them in some way out of character for a moment. Ok so what is the lesson here? Look introspectively at yourself and children, talk about the reaction of the team, owner, management, fans and with how you might have felt in a similar situation. Point out the power of emotion, both positive and negative; discuss the need to let emotions out but, in a controllable manner. Review the way almost every person stood up and was accountable for their reaction *PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY*, understand what drove them to that level and frustration and yet got past it. The great thing about most sporting events is at the end of the game, there are only two possible outcomes; a winner and loser. How you mange the outcome and perspective can go a long way in building personal character and teaching our children correct values.

*Teamwork: For a team to be successful, all of the members must work together and accept different roles and responsibilities. Not everyone can be a quarterback, someone has to block. When you participate in a team sport, you recognize the different talents and personalities very quickly. Pretty soon the dynamics of a team focuses people to different roles, sometimes reluctantly. When a person is exposed to the team environment for the first, their behavior is interesting to observe. This is simply due to the fact they have a predetermined role defined in their mind prior to going into the team situation. What tells a lot about the team dynamics is how people adjust to the personalities, values, leader and attempt to focus on what the collective efforts are trying to achieve. There are books on the dynamics if teams and their effectiveness, if you want more team information the resources are endless. I just wanted to briefly point out, participation on a team is an important part of personal development, learning to cooperate, and teaching the favorite cliché; there is no *I* in the word team.

*Can a sports person be a Role Model? Not as a stand alone Role Model. Why, the reason is simply because on a daily basis we do not observe all of the aspects of that persons daily life, we see only the person in one aspect, a sporting event. The Role Model you choose, in my opinion needs to be someone that can be observed frequently, approachable to the point of engaging in conversations, observed in different social and professional situations and consistent in the application of their values. This may sound a little strange, but I developed a morphed Role Model with multiple traits of people close to me. I took from my parent's patience and teaching skill, my grandparent's unconditional expressive love, the power of family and faith from all my relatives.
Can a sports person be the example for a specific achievement or trait that forms part of a person's character, you bet. Pick a sport, choose your Role Model and try to play the game that way. An example of this would be John Elway, why because he a great example of perseverance and a never give up attitude. Have open conversations about Role Models with your family and friends, the conversations can get very entertaining.

In many ways, sports participation and involvement opens up learning experiences for the body as well as the mind at a young age. As we get older, a sport gives us opportunity to relive moments of successes and failures that we can share with our friends and family.

**Go out and enjoy a sporting event soon, be careful you are not as young as you were last time you played football with your children and the grandchildren**

Manners and the Remote Control

I was reminded the other night watching TV with my wife, there are manners associated with the TV remote controller. I knew that...sort of. The situation was this, she was watching a show that went to commercial, so she left the room and remote on the table. So, I picked up the remote and flipped to the sports channel to check scores, no problem… I indented on switching back to her show after the 3 minutes of commercials. Whoop’s was I wrong, no sooner had the channel been surfed, there came a booming *what are you doing? I was watching that TV show and listening to the commercials so I knew when to return to the living room *. What followed that comment was a dissertation on remote control manners and common politeness that extends to the use and handling of the almighty electronic marvel. Furthermore, I also learned that somehow I should have recognized these unwritten rules about *channel surfing* when I did not have control of the remote. My warning to you all, make sure the remote control (literally) is under your control and in your hands before changing the channels.

Ok, enough about the remote. The topic got me thinking about manners in general and raised this question; when was the last time you implemented the manners you were taught a child? I’m not talking about the formal manners that some people learn in preparation for social events, formal dinners or dances. I’m talking about the basic manners we all were taught as children and in turn passed onto our children. We all need to be reminded to practice manners everyday, teach our children by example and hopefully they will catch on. When I refer to the basic manners (some may categorize as common courtesy), here is my top 10 list:

*Say Please when requesting or asking for something
*Say Thank You upon receiving assistance or service
*Open a Door for someone
*Listen when someone else is talking, do not talk over them
*Offer your assistance to someone by saying Can I help?
*Correct a child’s behavior when they are disrespectful of family or other people
*Show Respect to everyone in your family, including your children
*Do not yell at anytime… in my book yelling serves no purpose in any situation
*Be Understanding
*Exercise patience

I strongly believe, everyday you are exposed to multiple situations that facilitate utilization of one or more of the manners listed above. The opportunities to use manners are endless and become available to you first thing in the morning. All you have to do is recognize your behavior patterns to see if you can exercise manners when an opportunity presents itself. It may take a while to catch on with the family or peers, but I assure you in a very short amount of time changes will occur. I hope with the implementation of basic manners in your daily regime, positive attitudes prevail and success in your life occurs.

Managing Communication of Purchased Part Lead Times

If you are a supply chain person, you realize the perpetual swirl surrounding your attempts in communicating purchase part lead times to interested personnel. In my estimation there are two key points you need to assure are understood before attempting anymore communication.

Key point number one: The manufacturing planning system must contain understandable, credible and maintainable lead times that include dock delivery dates. Through your supply chain organization, get the supplier to commit realistic lead time delivery dates to you in writing. After this is established, make sure the date and lead times are loaded into the appropriate planning system for your company. Your supply chain personnel need to be relentless in managing these dates to assure all the other program and manufacturing schedules, testing faculties, customer interfaces and milestones are accurate. It is imperative the dates are managed and changes are communicated immediately. Depending where you are positioned in the company, the process to communicate and establish credible dates must be detailed, documented and adhered to.

Key point number two: Make sure the message is clear; Supply Chain manages the dates in the manufacturing planning system, don't plan on the dates getting pulled in, rather manage and plan on the parts being received as specified in the planning system on time. Any other system, manual or intuitive will only disrupt and compromise any credibility the system has established. This message must be communicated to all support organizations, especially customer service and sales personnel, as these organizations will always respond to customer requests for upside and shorter lead times. Every customer is concerned about the lead time; more often than not the people who are committing your company to a delivery date are not fully informed or understand the impact of providing a compromised (unachievable) delivery date. The lead time message regarding managing lead times, shall come from senior supply chain management, at the same time being supported throughout the company by senior manufacturing personnel and understood by management. What must be clear and consistent is the basic message; the lead times in the system are accurate, supply chain will continually work to better the dates, do not plan on a different date until the manufacturing planning system date changes. The part of the message that often gets ignored is when personnel fail to check the planning system date first, and jump right into the "fly-by" questions on upside requests. Try to contain the fly-by, frequent communication and system integrity will help minimize this practice. If not, establish a single point of contact that all requests must flow through, the more senior a person the better.

The organizational discipline associated with lead times shall be:
*rely on the system dates
*assure supply chain manages and communicates dates and changes
*do not allow organizations to regularly request pull-in dates
*communicate all the manufacturing planning dates regularly
*keep sales and customer service informed
*train the staff on using the manufacturing planning system

As everyone is aware, two way communications are critical in all areas of product manufacture, service and personal interaction.

Accurate and disciplined communication is imperative to the high performance supply chain and manufacturing organizations. Through out the whole delivery process, lead time management, consistent communication and discipline to plan against the system dates (good or bad) is required. The challenges are going to be when a *big $$* sale is presented to management and the *superman mentality* takes over through out all disciplines. Everyone is transformed (in their mind) into a procurement specialist and knows how to help out the true professionals in the organization. Don't support this superman mentality, you must remind everyone of their responsibilities and rely on the accuracy of the planning system to guide decisions so stick to the processes you have put in place. I wish you all success.

Isolated Intellectual Property

Every company has Intellectual Property (technical and practical knowledge) that is a critical component to its future. Your company standard processes may not even identify a method to capture Intellectual Property (IP) or define what IP is. Retention and definition of IP is key to your product and market place profitability; take a look at your situation. More often than not, the IP is isolated in the minds of your technical staff, scientists and senior engineers and tenured technicians. These IP people are not paid to document or capture their intellect, let alone reproduce in an understandable format unless formally queried and reviewed by senior management. Initiate action today to address your company’s situation if there is a shortcoming in this area.

Often there is no standard procedure to capture the IP in a documentation format, thus it is not reproducible and has the high risk potential of becoming lost or worse, transferred to the competition! In today’s market place there is a high probability of knowledge networking at trade shows, seminars and technical subject matter symposiums. Do you honestly think every person asking questions is a consumer? I do not think so, wake up or you will loose your IP edge. Don't think this is true, just look at the competitions products 3 months after a trade show, see any similarities?

Where to begin is simple, your technical director should have a couple of standard process’s outlined for defining to the staff what IP is and how to capture it. Most companies have engineering journals that are company property and issued to every new hire, but where this process falls short is in the use and implementation. If your chief scientist has been with the company 20 years, just thinks how many journals they might have filled out in longhand, read any Rx prescriptions lately? The journals are probably not cataloged or indexed that would allow easy identification and research of topics, or even kept in a common storage area or library. It is not too late to start reviewing how this technical data is captured by your IP personnel. Just ask a few questions to get an idea, it should not take long and the results my startle you.

If you are paper rich and organized poorly, one method may be to electronically scan the pages into archive database that can readily be indexed, searched and identified. Yes, this method will take some work and possible equipment purchase, but in the long run company IP survival is worth it. You m ay task you technical staff to organize their own journals, and of course look at the procedures when journals are issued. The first step should be with the issuance of journals and assuring there are formal steps that identify and implement how IP it to be documented and captures so the company does not loose any more time.

You will know how to best address your situation, if you have a formal method in place that is working great, many companies do not. Do not let the isolated IP become lost, act today, good luck and I hope you are successful in your endeavors.